Dhawal Verma
I build software systems for a living and spend the rest of my time playing chess, watching sports, reading, and finding excuses to get on a plane. Writing about life, tech, and everything in between at Beyond the Black Box.
Building systems, leading teams, staying curious.
Professionally, I'm an engineering leader, systems architect, and software builder. Over the past decade I've scaled platforms that opened up new revenue, brought discipline to multi-million-dollar cloud spend, and replaced workflows that used to take days with ones that finish in minutes.
My path into software was not the usual one. I started in biotechnology 🧬 , then went to graduate school for computer science and did my research in bioinformatics. I published a couple of papers, realized I was more interested in building production systems than writing more of them, and moved into engineering full-time. From there I worked as a software engineer, architect, a manager, and then a director.
Today I'm Director of Platform Architecture at Bandwidth Inc., leading the Architecture of Platform Engineering across Data, AI, and ML. My work sits at the intersection of three hard questions: how to build platforms that scale without running away from you, how to bring AI agents safely into production, and how to give engineering teams paved roads that make the right choice the easy one.
I care as much about the teams as the technology. Good systems come from good teams, and good teams come from deliberate choices: clear ownership, honest feedback, and a little bit of operational discipline.
Chess ♔ is an obsession, and I'm competitive in a way my friends find funny. Soccer ⚽ and cricket 🏏 are my first sporting loves, and the Denver Nuggets have my attention in the NBA 🏀. Music runs across most genres, with rock and metal on the deepest shelf. 🤘🏽
Travel ✈️ is the other thread. About twenty countries across Asia, Europe, and North America, and I'd like that number to keep climbing. What pulls me in is culture, food, and architecture: the way a place tells you who built it and what they valued, usually without anyone having to explain it. 🏔️ Anywhere the landscape does most of the talking, I'll find a reason to go.
Engineering & Leadership
Practical, jargon-free insights on software engineering, the architectural choices that power them, and leadership.
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Skills & Tools
Executive Leadership
Software Architecture
Data Architecture
AI & Innovation
Cloud & Infrastructure
Projects & Impact
Data Analytics Commercialization
Spearheaded the strategy to monetize internal analytics, launching a commercial anomaly detection product for enterprise customers.
Drove a 25% increase in new annual recurring revenue while establishing a new data-as-a-service vertical.
AI-Powered Workflow Automation
Designed and deployed a Multi-Agent LLM engine with Human-in-the-Loop oversight to automate high-stakes application reviews.
Eliminated 60% of manual labor costs and reduced review cycles from days to minutes.
Enterprise FinOps Transformation
Instituted a rigorous FinOps framework and fiscal governance strategy across the global data organization.
Mitigated a projected 35% cloud infrastructure overage and secured significant long-term cost avoidance.
Let's Talk Data & AI
Open to collaborations, advisory conversations, speaking opportunities, or just geeking out about data architecture and AI.